Our youngest batch of chickens has just started laying eggs over the last couple of weeks. Finding those first cute little eggs (sometimes in the nesting boxes, but just as often on the coop floor or even in the middle of the yard!) is one of the joys of late summer that just never gets old.

This also means that suddenly, we’ve gone from barely getting enough eggs keep us supplied, to eggs coming out our ears.

I love it! We’ve been doing some extra baking, and having some fantastic frittatas and quiches for dinner. But even still – they’re starting to pile up. Just a bit.

I could sell them – and I do sell a few dozen here and there. But the first thing I like to do when I get a surplus of eggs is to replenish my freezer stash.

Every now and again, we get to a point in the year where we just don’t get enough eggs from our girls to quite meet our needs. In the late summer or early fall, the adult birds go through a molt, and stop laying for a while. Also, the darkest days of winter slow down production.

I’ve even had the girls go on “egg strike” for emotional reasons, like the time they had a particularly scary run-in with a hawk. It had flown right into the coop, and had my sweet little Eidelweiss in its talons. Even though I was able to rescue her (at a full 9-months pregnant, mind you! And no – the hawk wasn’t hurt.) that little escapade put my poor babies in a tizzy for many, many days. No eggs for me.

So now and again, even with 20 chickens – we find ourselves needing extra eggs.

Thankfully, I always have a good supply in the freezer, so we never run out. They thaw beautifully, and cook up nicely. We usually scramble them, or use them in baking. For those purposes, I find it almost impossible to tell the difference between fresh and frozen eggs.

The only way I can tell the difference is if I cook them over easy. The yolk is a tad more sturdy – not exactly rubbery, but…different. It’s not terribly off-putting, but I can definitely tell the egg has been frozen. For scrambled eggs though – total perfection.

I find that they maintain their quality for a very long time when properly frozen. The “powers-that-be” say that eggs can be frozen for up to 6 months. But, especially when vacuum-sealed, I find they last very well, and I’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference between an egg that’s been frozen for one week or one year.

How to freeze eggs

So here’s my method for freezing eggs.

I far prefer freezing them individually, so that I can just take out however many I need at a time. I do that by using this heavenly little silicone soap mold. It costs about $6, and it might be the best $6 I’ve ever spent on kitchen tools. It gets used for a lot of things, but this is what I use it for most – freezing eggs.

Break one egg into each space in the mold. Slide a flat cutting board or cookie sheet underneath, so you can easily move it to the freezer.

Slip the whole mold onto a shelf in your freezer, and let the eggs freeze until hard. I find that 4 hours is plenty.

When they’re frozen, just pop them out, and place into freezer bags.

If I’m just doing a few at a time, I’ll sometimes use regular ziploc sandwich bags. 4 eggs fit nicely.

Usually though, if I’m freezing eggs, I keep two molds going constantly for a couple of days, and I freeze a LOT of eggs all at once. I put them into vacuum sealer bags – 8 in the quart size, and 12 in the gallon size (I’ve linked the kind I use – sturdy and not prone to leaking, but cheaper than the name brand).

I seal them up, using my vacuum sealer. (This is the one I have. Don’t buy it. It works, but you’ll wish you bought a better one – pinky swear.)

Then I stack them flat, one on top of the other, in a corner of my big old chest freezer in the basement. It’s an amazingly space-efficient way of fitting a LOT of frozen eggs into a fairly small, organized space.

If you don’t have a silicone mold, and don’t want to get one – you can also hack it with a muffin tin. Use it just like the silicone mold, breaking one egg into each space, and freezing until solid. To un-mold the individually frozen eggs, turn upside down over a cookie sheet, then set something warm over the bottom of the muffin tin. A hot water bottle works well. You want to thaw the bottom of the eggs just enough to easily pop them out, then place them in freezer bags, just like the instructions above.

To use frozen eggs, just pull out the number of eggs you need. Thaw for a few hours (or overnight) in a bowl, in the fridge. If you’re making up a big quiche or another large egg dish, and are going to use a whole package of eggs, just let them thaw right in the freezer bag, in the fridge. When you’re ready to use them, snip a corner off the bag, and pour them into your mixing bowl. So easy. So tidy.

This method has definitely streamlined my system for storing eggs. It’s made it so I never have to buy eggs – and I never dread using frozen ones, since these are easy to use, and not a big yellowish frozen lump, that needs to be thawed and then measured out into portions. I hope it works as well for you as it does for me!

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Comments

Hi Perry! Thanks so much for the kind words. It’s amazing how far our kitchen resources have come in the last decade, isn’t it? Hard to believe silicone molds like this haven’t been around really all that long, but now I can’t imagine my kitchen without them. Thanks again for the kind comment!

I froze my eggs last summer. It was killing me to have to buy eggs when the girls are molting and bodies resting in the winter. I used a small silicone muffin pan I had and it worked great I popped them into gallon freezer bags and dated the month collected and used the oldest ones first all winter long. They don’t translate the same for fried eggs like a fresh so I bought a dozen here and there for that. I defrost mine and throw it in the blender to finely chop up the firm yokes and use for mayo, scrambled, quiche and baking. Anything you would use beat/scrambled up eggs.

I am going to see how it comes out if I pre beat them and then freeze since the yoke consistency isn’t a way we like them when fried.

I am going to also try the slow defrost in the fridge you mentioned I have been doing it at room temp.

thank you for all this information this is so cool tool to know i just love to learn new methods on how to keep my food storage growing today i will do some eggs for my freezer sounds good that will help out so much i will be able to say i have always got eggs thank you again

Rawinia, thanks so much for the kind words! YES! It’s such a great feeling to always know there are eggs on hand – I’m grateful for that as well. Glad you found the tip helpful! Best wishes, and thanks again!

Hi Kathleen, you can do it either way! They freeze just fine if you separate them first, but they also separate very easily (just like a fresh egg) if you wait until after they defrost. I do feel my yolks get a little tougher for some reason if I separate first and freeze without the white, but the whites turn out perfectly. Hope this helps!!

So glad to have found this method. We just defrosted our first batch of frozen eggs and the yolks stayed pretty solid. They tasted fine in a scramble but they didn’t mix up like normal. Is that typical?

Hi Kristin! It’s normal for the yolks to hold together a bit more than yolks that have never been frozen. What I’ve found, and few readers have also let me know, is that the more slowly you defrost the eggs, the more like fresh eggs they’ll be when you work with them. I find that if I set my eggs to thaw overnight in the fridge, the yolks are a lot softer and more like fresh, than if I let them thaw quickly at room temperature. Hope this helps!!

Hi Jaymi! I would definitely not say that they fry up like a fresh egg – that’s one use where you’d notice a bit of difference. TOTALLY edible and fine, but the yolks will be a bit more sturdy and almost “chewy”. Scrambled, or used in a omelette, or anything baked, they’re great, but over-easy or sunny-up…you’d likely be disappointed. Hope this helps!

I just tried this recently. I pan “scrambled” them and noticed the yolk was sturdy like you said. I let them thaw overnight just to see the consistency before using. They cooked up great and tasted DELICIOUS! This was a fantastic post, thank you for putting it out there.

Thank you for sharing your experience on freezing eggs, especially how you’ve wriiten about your experiences with them. I’ll be using your method this weekend. So glad you could rescue Eidelweiss, poor thing and glad you were there. Have a super day!

Wow, that is such a great question! The honest answer is that I have never tried it. BUT – I feel that the texture of the white really does not seem altered after thawing, so my inclination is that it would work. I MAY just have to experiment with this now…it’s been way too long since I’ve make macaroons! If you try it, please let us know how it turns out for you!

Anna, Thank you so much for this post. I wasn’t sure about freezing the eggs, but now I do. Sometimes there are just too many, and sometimes not enough. We were lucky this winter; the ladies kept the eggs coming and I did not need to buy any.

Julie, thanks so much for the sweet comment! Isn’t it wonderful to have an abundance of eggs, and just know you’ll never have to buy any? Now that I’ve got a pretty good freezer stash, I’m about to try my hand at curing yolks in salt – I’ll have to let you know how it goes! Thanks again, and have a great night!

I’m 75 years old and have just learned something new — freezing eggs. Now I’m even wiser than I was yesterday. Thank you for your input. When my daughter moves into their house on 13 acres and fills the hen house, I’ll share this knowledge with her.

Hi Matthew! When I use the vacuum sealer, I really notice almost no change with long-term storage. I have stored eggs for at least 10 months this way, and been very pleased with the results. If I have some that I’ve stored in just regular ziploc bags, I always use those ones first, so can’t speak for the taste of ones stored this way for more than 3 months. Honestly, with the vacuum sealed eggs, I feel I could probably store them even for a year or two and be happy with the results when thawed. Hope that helps a bit!

Hi Anna, I didn’t know I could freeze eggs at all so this is SUPER-useful, now that all 24 of my hens are coming into lay at the same time. :-0 Also, thank you for your honesty about the vacuum sealer you have. I am shopping for one and had been considering this exact model (or a slightly more expensive one as you suggest). Love your site; always entertaining and informative!

Debra, I’m so sorry to just be seeing your comment now! I’m glad this could be helpful! And YEAH – 24 girls all laying! Woohoo!! EGGS GALORE!

I’m glad the vacuum sealer advice could be handy too…sometimes I don’t know how much to share, and I honestly kind of questioned putting that in. Thanks for your encouragement, and your very kind comment!!